edebug-defun at compile-time or at eval-buffer time?

Question

While I am developing some elisp package I find myself edebug-defun'ing the same critical functions foo-some-mess and bar-more everytime I modify them, or everytime I load the code after compiling.

Is there a way to tell emacs once and for all that these two functions must be stepped through with edebug?

Answer 1

You may be able to do this by surrounding definitions of function you want to instrument with (edebug-all-defs).

(edebug-all-defs)

;; this one is instrumented
(defun foo ()
  (bar))

;; this one is, too
(defun bar ()
  (message "hi!"))

(edebug-all-defs)

;; this one is not
(defun baz ()
  (bar))

Now foo and bar are instrumented, and baz is not.

I found this by pressing C-h k C-M-x and reading the doc. string, which pointed me to edebug-all-defs. Its documentation string says this:

edebug-all-defs is a variable defined in edebug.el. Its value is nil

Documentation:

If non-nil, evaluating defining forms instruments for Edebug. This applies to eval-defun, eval-region, eval-buffer, and eval-current-buffer. eval-region is also called by eval-last-sexp, and eval-print-last-sexp.

You can use the command edebug-all-defs to toggle the value of this variable. You may wish to make it local to each buffer with (make-local-variable 'edebug-all-defs) in your emacs-lisp-mode-hook.

Answer 2

The usual way is: if it hurts, don't do that.

More specifically, don't "compile + load" the code, but edit the code directly in the Emacs where you perform the tests, and after changing the code just do C-u C-M-x or C-M-x (according to whether the changed code should be stepped or not).